Rare+ items are much harder to get now despite assurances to the contrary

I was told in the old forum that the chance of finding a rare+ item in a common (now free) box or an uncommon (now star) box had been improved. When I read this I was skeptical but concluded I had no basis for an argument. That has changed. After dozens of boxes I have not found a single rare+ item. I have found rare pieces but these are worth less than 10% of a full item owing to the gold required to fuse them. I used to find a couple a week now I'm lucky if I find enough pieces to fuse just one. The demand for rare pieces to level up items is high and finding them is difficult. They are overpriced in the shop and as stated above, getting them as scrap is also difficult since the rare items needed for scrapping aren't dropping like they should. I suppose it's possible I've had an epic run of bad luck but I expect I'd have found at least one rare+ item in these new boxes by now. Please increase the drop rates or lower the shop prices so we can level up our items.

 

Rares and in particular (and much more important) epics are much harder to acquire now - Beyond "just wait and see" and into the situation being about as first expected. Conclusion so far? Epic gathering for my play/farming style is about halved. Which is sad, I like the new cannon smell!

Removing the 150star box and the ability to stack up gold/pearls for full epics was a massive change. Atleast we got double prices on rares & epics in return for not knowing what we will get

Oh well, I'll soak it up & look forward to the day I finally break 3k infamy & get the epic box from the achievement!

 

I've opened a few of those from quest completion and I haven't found a single legendary piece. This leads me to believe that legendary items are the exclusive property of wallet warriors. I understand the game needs to make money but if the current state of affairs continues non-buyers won't be able to compete and will leave the game in droves. Traffic is a type of currency in online gaming and Rovio would be wise to retain as many players as it can.

 

In response to @kylek33, I personally agree with some points and disagree with some points. I will address them below.
1. I agree with the progress of getting rare+ items being quite slow. The epic pieces appear as rare as before, but you only buy 1/10 of it. The removal of rare and epic boxes also slows down the progress as with the boxes you get a lot of epics and rares. Now there's just premium box that gives you the stuff, yet it's just one rare item and a fragment of an epic item.
2. I partially disagree with legendaries being an exclusive for wallet warriors. I have never gotten any from boxes, however I got all mine from lucky scrapping of unwanted items. (I have a total of 3 pieces now)

 

@Captain_Perry good luck with making those 3 legendary parts into something useful and then upgrading them to make them competitive.

I seriously think by the time you get there (not being a wallet warrior) you would have quit and moved on to another game.

As such, legendaries are for wallet warriors.

 

The new update item levelling scheme sucks!
Compared to the old one, the current one doesn't make it interesting for levelling. The it's harder to level items. Rare items and harder to find.

 

@Plohtc, as a person who has tried several times to level up rare T3s and epic T2s before the update, I think that the difficulty is the same as before. Before you have 3 tiers with different levels, e.g. Epic T2 and T3 being max at level 30. Therefore in my opinion, the difficulty is reasonable as it's technically 30 levels transferred to the current 10 levels per tier.
Disclaimer: Common and uncommon items are excluded in this example as they are often omitted, while rares and epics are what people desire most.

 

Difficulty is same. Just feels different. And most don't like the feeling of not being in control.